Nadine Farah is the associate instructor for Hackbright Academy’s Full-Stack Web Development course. When applying to medical school, Nadine realized she could have a bigger impact on medicine by improving the technology used in the medical field. She decided to switch careers and get into tech. Now, Nadine works as a software engineer and community manager at Punch Through Design. She joined Hackbright’s part-time team to empower more women to code and have fun doing it. Read about her story and what you’ll learn in her upcoming class…
What motivated you to teach at Hackbright Academy?
Education is one of my passions. I love helping students learn. It’s always a challenge taking complex subject matters and breaking them down to chewable pieces. I love hearing students say “I got it”. Hackbright also has amazing instructors and so I am excited about working with the other Full-Stack instructors, Thom and Souyma.
What will students learn in the Full-Stack Web Development course?
Students will learn how to build end-to-end web application that will include server-side web applications, with Node.js/Express, and a front end with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. The web application will make use of a relational database so data can be persistently stored. As students are building awesome web apps, they will learn best practices and tools such as git. Instructors will teach skills that will enable them to problem solve. Most importantly, students will have an awesome time.
Why do you think it’s important to have these skill sets?
Every year, our world is becoming more digital. Knowledge about computers, hardware, and software are becoming increasingly important. Being able to understand how these tech stacks work, communicating it, and using it is crucial.
All companies use these technologies – including Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Some companies use these technologies at different capacities, nonetheless, all companies make use of it.
How is learning at Hackbright different than learning somewhere else?
Hackbright is not pretentious like some other schools can be!
Everyone here is extremely patient and willing to go the extra mile for a student. Instructors are devoted to students’ success. I’ve experienced this firsthand. They want you to leave the classroom only to come back being more inspired to code.
What has been your favorite tech project you’ve worked on?
resCUE was a labor of love: https://github.com/nfarah86/resCUE . resCUE is wearable hardware designed to protect its user by transmitting their current location to their contact list in the event of an emergency. I was doing Python by day and learning hardware and Objective-C at night (aka minimal sleep).
What women in the working world do you admire? I admire a lot of female entrepreneurs: Sara Blakely who created Spanx, J.K.Rowling who created Harry Potter, Elizabeth Holmes who created Theranos, and Tory Burch who created her own fashion line- Tory Burch.
What inspires you?
As cliche as this sounds, to make the world a better place. By a ‘better place’ I want to help people so they can enable others. Help can be in the form of teaching, giving, listening, and so much more. What inspires me about technology is you are limited only by your imagination. That’s very powerful. Essentially, when you become equipped with technical skills, it’s like you have magic powers and can create anything you imagine!
What do you enjoy doing for fun?
I’m training for a duathlon (running and biking). Outside of that, I love playing with my dog, Romeo, hanging out with friends, and (cough-cough) coding.
What’s your favorite 90s jam?
That’s easy- Backstreet Boys (any song from them). OK, you can laugh now.
You can learn more about Nadine by following her on Twitter – @nadinefarah. Nadine will be teaching Hackbright’s upcoming Full-End Web Development Part-Time Course, which begins in August. Enrollment deadline is July 27th.